More In Your Life

No reverence for Lee

Posted:
Sep. 10, 2017 12:01 am

Editor:

Recently, a letter writer pushed the notion of reverence for Confederate Civil War soldiers like Gen. Robert E. Lee. This posting in your paper came after several missteps by our president on what had happened in Virginia.

We cannot continue to create those type of missteps now, as it is hard to figure where the president stands on his moral compass, but we can note that Robert E. Lee cannot be revered, as anything more than a traitor to the Union.

People like Lee, Jefferson Davis and others are entitled to pages in a history book, but like the Germans after World War II, no more in German texts.

Actions by Lee led to a war where relatives of mine and others came down from the mountains of Pennsylvania to fight an insurgency on battlefields like Gettysburg. They were Welsh, and often miners, but later generations of mine were Irish and Italian Catholics, who faced the fury of the "know nothings" that survived that war to commit violence against the above ethnicities and butchery on Jewish and black-Americans.

As a boy, I lived near the silent movie studios of Fort Lee where "Birth of a Nation" was filmed, and saw that movie based on the KKK when I was in college. That movie was often used as a recruiting film long into the 20th century. I wondered how D.W. Griffith could make a movie entitled "Intolerance" one year later. In regards to views of history on Jefferson and Washington, or even Columbus, they were a product of their times, and though that is no answer, they will be treated differently.

If you pay homage to Lee, you do not follow the American spirit, but instead took a wrong turn in a Frost poem.

Grateful for all utility workers Editor: 1:30 p.m. All is quiet except for the snow plows. I am relieved not to hear the wail of the firehouse siren, maybe our firemen are able to rest? I am writing this letter while we still have daylight.

In Case You Missed It

In 1907, Dr. Thomas L. Bennett incorporated the F.H. Bennett Biscuit Company in New York City. The company originally had its bakery located near the corner of Avenue D and 19th Street on the west side of Manhattan.